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The Role of Quality Labels in Market-Driven Animal Welfare

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Abstract

In policy-making the consumption of specially labelled products, and its role in improving the welfare of livestock, has attracted considerable attention. There is in many countries a diverse market for animal welfare-friendly products which is potentially confusing and may lack transparency. We ask whether special quality labels that involve medium levels of animal welfare, as compared with labels promoting premium levels of animal welfare, have a role to play in promoting improvements in animal welfare. The Danish pork market is our reference case, but we also widen the context by comparing the markets for pork in three other European countries. Our findings suggest that in order to improve animal welfare through demand for welfare-friendly products it is important to maintain separate the market for products with strong animal welfare profiles from markets for products with medium levels of animal welfare where, often, animal welfare is bundled together with other food quality attributes. We conclude that such quality labels may indeed play an important role in promoting higher animal welfare standards provided that they offer real improvements in animal welfare as compared with standard products. They will be attractive to consumers with a positive, but not especially strong interest in animal welfare as an individual food attribute who would otherwise be inclined to purchase standard products.

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Notes

  1. At this point it is important to note that the term ‘premium welfare’ in the present paper is used because these are the highest standards being marketed; it does not imply that the animal welfare in question cannot be improved further.

  2. The choice experiment and calculation of WTP are explained in Mørkbak et al. (2010).

  3. In the questions investigating why respondents purchase domestic produce, the most common reasons for choosing Danish pork were to support Danish production (50 %), followed by better animal welfare (24 %). Thus, concern for animal welfare may be of some importance as a feature of domestic production.

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank a number of international colleagues who have provided information on animal welfare labels in their home countries. Special thanks go to Lars Schrader, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Germany. We also want to thank two anonymous referees for valuable comments which enabled us to improve the paper considerably; and we want to thank Paul Robinson for helping us to improve the language of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 25, 1958, Frederiksberg C, Denmark

    Lennart Ravn Heerwagen, Sigrid Denver, Peter Sandøe & Tove Christensen

  2. Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, J.B. Winsløws Vej 9, 5000, Odense C, Denmark

    Morten Raun Mørkbak

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  1. Lennart Ravn Heerwagen
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  2. Morten Raun Mørkbak
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  4. Peter Sandøe
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Correspondence to Lennart Ravn Heerwagen.

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Heerwagen, L.R., Mørkbak, M.R., Denver, S. et al. The Role of Quality Labels in Market-Driven Animal Welfare. J Agric Environ Ethics 28, 67–84 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-014-9521-z

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